WHM DPS needs to stay this high.

[LadyKairi]

You call great healing, best damage, no MP management and great dungeon utility in Holy not having your cake and eating it too?

All healers have been great at healing, so that is hardly something that’s attractive. Holy is only great in casual content, and not something that is attractive. The problem people have had with whm is it does not bring anything to the table that’s better than the other healers that really matters in high end content. What’s the point in great heals when the others are just as capable as whm? And what’s the point in having great heals when the content doesn’t require it? Sch and Ast have been the power couple because of their raid utility. Whm was being locked out of parties because they lacked anything that made it compete with the other two.

Casual content isn’t the worry here. It’s how a job performs and competes in high end content. Whms want to be competitive with the other healers. Good heals and holy do not cut it, because like it or not, everything revolves around damage. If you can’t increase the damage your team does, then you need to make up for it in personal dps (see blm and sam as examples). Our heals aren’t what makes a certain job desirable when the others are just as capable at healing. Our worth is in our damage/raid contribution, so I would not say whms are eating their cake.

Whms don’t want to get put on a shelf once progression is done. Again. And it’s gonna keep happening if they don’t have any meaningful advantages over the other two.

[PondHollow]

As a primarily Scholar raider I have no problem being systematically outclassed DPSwise by WHM. But I just want all the healers to feel good and be able to do overworld and quests in a timely manner. Surely all three getting DPS buffs would not be a problem.

And there's another thing: most people who play DPS don't want to heal. If you can tie HP restoration and offense together in a healer, even if a healer could greatly outdps a DPS, they still wouldn't play healers. Exhibit A is that in 4.5, people played jobs other Black Mage and Scholar in dungeons and treasure maps, though no other job came close to the DPS of either. There is no reason to limit the DPS of the healers in general.

[EaMett]

I find it funny that people can’t extrapolate. I mean do they have to spell out every little detail? Give it until 5.1 and see if the difficulty increases and the required healing increases. They stated they wanted healers to have to heal more than they had been doing. He did state he didn’t want healer to think that it meant they would not be able dps and that healing would become “to stressful”. He then offered that the first tier of eden would be similar in difficulty as Creator to “give people a chance to get use to the changes.” Logic would dictate that if they are waiting on boosting the requirements of one they are waiting to boost everything else. Also, all of the changes to the healers kits make very little sense unless they planned to boost the healing requirements. If they fail to change anything in heal requirements at that time complain. If they only tweak the raids up slightly then complain. But complaining about difficulty is a bit premature at the moment as we already know prior to 5.1 absolutely nothing was changing in those regards.

P.S. I do have expectations that healing reqs will increase. I am, however, under no illusions that the healing reqs will ramp up so much that medium skilled players or above will only have to heal. I just expect that they will change the heal time to dps time ratio that the average healer is capable of maintaining.

Quite a few of us have made the point since the media tour that they would need to exceed the current requirements of ultimate fights for it to make any sense. Hence my "if they looked into how much healing would make sense they would see it's impossible" comment. As a reminder you still keep about ~70% dps uptime there with the 4.x kit, let alone the extra stuff we've got now.
So yeah, sure maybe we'll need to heal more than 10% (final omega is like... 5-6% healing gcds on SCH) of the fight in savage. But we all know it'll never be 30%. It's going to be a lot of time to feel sad about the one button wonder dps regardless.

[Deceptus]

Quite a few of us have made the point since the media tour that they would need to exceed the current requirements of ultimate fights for it to make any sense. Hence my "if they looked into how much healing would make sense they would see it's impossible" comment. As a reminder you still keep about ~70% dps uptime there with the 4.x kit, let alone the extra stuff we've got now.
So yeah, sure maybe we'll need to heal more than 10% (final omega is like... 5-6% healing gcds on SCH) of the fight in savage. But we all know it'll never be 30%. It's going to be a lot of time to feel sad about the one button wonder dps regardless.

Yep. Yoshi straight up got called out by saying "WHM Does the healing and SCH is left to do damage" despite someone showing him completely wrong on God Kefka.

[Feidam]

Quite a few of us have made the point since the media tour that they would need to exceed the current requirements of ultimate fights for it to make any sense. Hence my "if they looked into how much healing would make sense they would see it's impossible" comment. As a reminder you still keep about ~70% dps uptime there with the 4.x kit, let alone the extra stuff we've got now.
So yeah, sure maybe we'll need to heal more than 10% (final omega is like... 5-6% healing gcds on SCH) of the fight in savage. But we all know it'll never be 30%. It's going to be a lot of time to feel sad about the one button wonder dps regardless.

Only for upper tier players though. I mean let’s face it the average player doesn’t play optimally as is and a good many people struggle with just the base lvl 8man content. When looking at what is going on we have to pay attention to the average not the bleeding edge. FFXIV takes great pains to make sure the classes and general content is completable/playable by even the lowest skill level. If you are an upper skill level player aside from maybe some savage fights and the ultimate fights you will always find the content pretty easy and as an extension the classes.

They could fix this by adding more tiers of content, but their metrics seems to show that the majority of people never see savage levels, so is it worthwhile in that regard? I would say yes, but development costs compare to player time spent in said content seems to say otherwise. I’d argue that the same is said for class design. Hence the healers being made “easier”. Still holding out hope that the healing reqs will increase a bit across the board.

[NobleWinter]

White Mage needs Cleric Stance back. It should allow all AoE healing spells to deal damage to enemies of equal potency to the Heal within range for a set duration around 8 to 12 Secs maybe with a relatively short cool down like 60 to 90 secs. This way they don't trade healing for DPS during heavy raid wide damage phases. If this was implemented WHM would be perfect and the damage of the other healers could be brought up to compensate for the continual damage WHM could put out. Cure 3 would actually be a great tool to DPS as a Nuke and Medica 2 could put a wide reaching DoT. That's the kind of "Utility" they should have.

[Gaethan_Tessula]

... increase a bit across the board.

It'd have to be a helluva lot more than "a bit" to justify the absolutely dire gameplay healers must put up with in casual to Extreme content right now. The hardest content in this game currently still has a supermajority of your GCD's spent DPS'ing. Everything else has far, FAR less.

Also, I disagree that we should be basing game design on the "average." That just creates a frustratingly low skill ceiling at best, and winds up being directed towards the lowest common denominator over time at worst when allowing increasingly sloppier play drags the average down patch after patch.

Look at many fighting games. They're designed for the tournament level of play, but low level players can have plenty of fun button mashing with their fellows. A game should be designed around the assumption that the player has a baseline level of competence. I'd contest that the healers you're speaking about, who have trouble healing current 4 man dungeons, are neglecting a lot of their kit and therefore lack this baseline competence. Excepting AST players, since their healing kit is seriously in trouble at the moment specifically in the large trash pulls environment most casual content is comprised of.

[EaMett]

Only for upper tier players though. I mean let’s face it the average player doesn’t play optimally as is and a good many people struggle with just the base lvl 8man content. When looking at what is going on we have to pay attention to the average not the bleeding edge. FFXIV takes great pains to make sure the classes and general content is completable/playable by even the lowest skill level. If you are an upper skill level player aside from maybe some savage fights and the ultimate fights you will always find the content pretty easy and as an extension the classes.

They could fix this by adding more tiers of content, but their metrics seems to show that the majority of people never see savage levels, so is it worthwhile in that regard? I would say yes, but development costs compare to player time spent in said content seems to say otherwise. I’d argue that the same is said for class design. Hence the healers being made “easier”. Still holding out hope that the healing reqs will increase a bit across the board.

Yes this is absolutely correct and our complaint is that there are plenty of ways of allowing for a higher skill ceiling without raising access difficulty for these jobs. Not only that but sch already had some of these in place that we’re removed. ED is a perfect example, players could just ignore it and keep stacks for healing if they needed it. Then spend them proportionally to their comfort. Dissipation was somewhat the same, it played twofold depending on if you used it as an “oh shit” or optimized around it for the extra ED.
There are a few other example for sch alone.

Not only that but diversity is key to good game design and if sch wasn’t for you you still had options like whm that played simpler. Now you’re kinda stuck.

They obviously balanced (yet to see the balance) through homogenization which is already contrary to theory. We’re here making a case for the skill ceiling

[Feidam]

Yes this is absolutely correct and our complaint is that there are plenty of ways of allowing for a higher skill ceiling without raising access difficulty for these jobs. Not only that but sch already had some of these in place that we’re removed. ED is a perfect example, players could just ignore it and keep stacks for healing if they needed it. Then spend them proportionally to their comfort. Dissipation was somewhat the same, it played twofold depending on if you used it as an “oh shit” or optimized around it for the extra ED.
There are a few other example for sch alone.

Not only that but diversity is key to good game design and if sch wasn’t for you you still had options like whm that played simpler. Now you’re kinda stuck.

They obviously balanced (yet to see the balance) through homogenization which is already contrary to theory. We’re here making a case for the skill ceiling

You are only stuck though if you are looking for diversity among dps skills. Currently the healers healing kits and styles are different. The only thing that was homogenized were the dps skills. However, I’m not sure that we can call that collectively bad. There are those that rather like the changes to the healers and if the conversations in game indicate anything it’s a larger portion of the player base than reading the forums would indicate.

I play the scholar as my healer of choice(since 2.0). I miss ED, my second dot, shadowflare,bane and miasma2. However, I still find the class enjoyable. There a some issues to be sure, but scholars are wanting stuff back that I think is long gone. I feel like this was the first step in separating the scholar from the Arcanist like they wanted to do. Take energy drain. It is the now the summoners Aetherflow. It’s not coming back to Scholar. However, they could give a dps Aetherflow dump in a different form. IMO that lack is the only thing making the scholar feel clunky as you burn stacks on overhealing to keep fairy gauge growth and mp flowing which just feels wrong.

P.S. I do hope they can give us a dot based healer back. I do get tired of m dot classes moving away from dot’s all he time.

[LegoTechnic]

You are only stuck though if you are looking for diversity among dps skills. Currently the healers healing kits and styles are different. The only thing that was homogenized were the dps skills. However, I’m not sure that we can call that collectively bad. There are those that rather like the changes to the healers and if the conversations in game indicate anything it’s a larger portion of the player base than reading the forums would indicate.

I play the scholar as my healer of choice(since 2.0). I miss ED, my second dot, shadowflare,bane and miasma2. However, I still find the class enjoyable. There a some issues to be sure, but scholars are wanting stuff back that I think is long gone. I feel like this was the first step in separating the scholar from the Arcanist like they wanted to do. Take energy drain. It is the now the summoners Aetherflow. It’s not coming back to Scholar. However, they could give a dps Aetherflow dump in a different form. IMO that lack is the only thing making the scholar feel clunky as you burn stacks on overhealing to keep fairy gauge growth and mp flowing which just feels wrong.

P.S. I do hope they can give us a dot based healer back. I do get tired of m dot classes moving away from dot’s all he time.

I do find it odd how everyone seems to oversimplify things into just a "DPS issue".

- I miss Miasma and Shadowflare, but I'll live without them.
- Energy Drain as a move itself wasn't special, but I sorely, deeply miss the simple ability to use it to consume unneeded stacks, which has long been a core mechanic of the class.
- I rage at not being able to use Aetherflow outside of combat, especially when a fight ends just as aetherflow's cooldown comes up.
- I mourn the passing of Selene and the versatility decision she offered, especially since I remember her in her glory years, back before her skills were continually reduced into irrelevance (though the AoE esuna was neat).
- I regret that we can no longer trigger pet abilities during the casting of other actions because now they're forced player skills.
- I regret that Dissipation is now incredibly niche due to the removal of aether stack options combined with ability cooldowns, relegating it to a 20% adlo boost since it doesn't affect any of the aetherflow abilities, all while locking out the fairy for 30 seconds.
- I miss being able to Bane multiple DoTs onto a crowd, an aspect that helped set SCH apart from the other two healers.
- I still marvel at how god-awful weak Fey Illumination is now, especially when it wasn't all that powerful to begin with (seriously, is 5% magic mitigation even going to be noticable? 10% stronger adlos are at least usable).
- I'm annoyed that the fairy "eats" commands, sometimes putting it on cooldown without actually using the ability if you time it wrong.
- I'm sad that the fairy no longer has its own aggro, meaning I can't use it for sacrificial distraction shenanigans during mob spawns with Whispering Dawn aggro (since all aggro now applies to the SCH, and I really loved doing stuff like that, especially in places like a2 savage with the snipers!).
- I wish I could still target Embrace via a macro, especially with Seraph's powerful adlo-variant.
- I'm seriously irked that they decided to have crit adlo's Galvanize shield expire before the Catalyze shield, meaning that possibility of being able to Recitation-shield the tank while it was taking auto attacks and still deploy a shield is gone.
- I can't stand not being able to see the fairy in the party list, especially with its propensity to despawn when a tank runs out of fey union tether range and it locks up, refusing to heel, or is outranged due to wonky pathing in the Praetorium (or when you just forget to tell it to heel after a boss fight and it despawns where you placed it).
- Lastly, I miss the aetherflow cooldown trait from Stormsblood, which encouraged you to actively use your aetherflow stacks and honestly just added a cool level of fun to the resouce mechanic (I still hold that the trait was a canny level of design genius, and am sorry to see it go).

Hmm... That may have been kind of rambling, but I really do miss quite a lot. I'm still not all that sold on Fey Blessing (it's a free AoE heal, but it's kind of weak), but I want to like Seraph, who is at least pretty interesting, even if summoning her too fast can cancel a previous fairy order while still putting it on cooldown.